HENDERSONVILLE, North Carolina — North Carolina reportedly contributed more troops to the Confederacy than any other state and suffered more losses. But the ancestors of GOP candidate Madison Cawthorn fought for the Union side.
And in a break with President Trump’s stance on monuments to Confederate leaders, the 24-year-old Republican nominee to fill the House seat previously held by Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows says it’s time to end the romanticizing.
“I understand people want to honor their ancestors, but I do not believe we should be romanticizing people who seceded from our country,” Cawthorn recently told the Washington Examiner as part of a wide-ranging interview.
“They literally seceded from the United States and then fought a bloody war for it,” he said. “We’ve kind of seen a different approach to history, which I believe is kind of selective in what it highlights, what it doesn’t highlight.”
Cawthorn, a real estate investor who won the Republican nomination in the conservative western North Carolina district, beat the Trump-endorsed, Meadows hand-picked successor, Haywood County Republican Party Chairwoman Lynda Bennett, 62, in a runoff primary election June 23.
Though a strong conservative and a Trump supporter, Cawthorn isn’t afraid to take a different stance on some issues.
“I think we need to teach history. We absolutely need to teach slavery,” said Cawthorn, whose personal library includes books about American forefathers as well as the histories of ancient Rome and Greece.
In his Friday speech at the foot of Mount Rushmore, Trump equated statues of Confederate generals with those of the Founding Fathers and said the call to remove statues glorifying those who defended slavery was a push by leftists to rob the nation of its history.
“Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities,” the president said. “The American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them.”
In an interview conducted prior to the president’s remarks, Cawthorn reflected on a promise by French President Emmanuel Macron that statues would not come down in France.
“Macron was saying that no statue would come down in France because we’re not going to have a selective version of history,” Cawthorn said. “My pushback on that is, ‘Well, I doubt that you have a lot of statues made to English generals in your country. I’ve been there.’”
Cawthorn’s remarks were in response to a question about the renaming of military bases bearing the names of Confederate generals. North Carolina is home to one of the 10 bases whose names are being debated. Fort Bragg, located near Fayetteville, was named for Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.
To the base-naming question, Cawthorn admitted that his hyperlocal-focused campaign did not closely study the issue, and he reserved judgment.
“Literally, I think the reason we won our campaign is I was so focused on local politics, not national issues,” he said. “That made a huge difference because it just highlighted the difference between the two candidates.”
Nonetheless, Cawthorn was willing to go on the record about the issue of statues honoring Confederate generals, including Robert E. Lee.
“Gen. Lee was a great man, an incredible man,” he said. “But I think he was on the wrong side of history, and I don’t think we should romanticize the side of history he was on.”
